Reflections on Seminary: 10 Reasons Why My Reflections on Seminary Will Be Horribly Weighted Towards the Negative

As graduation is near, I am starting to reflect on my seminary experience.  I’d like to do a series of reflective posts on the matter but I feel like I need to start out with this disclaimer first: my reflections will be very negative.  I’ve struggled a lot over the past two years and so because my emotions have been in turmoil, my reflections will most likely manifest those feelings.

1.   During seminary I Had mononucleosis for 5 months.  This is the number one, awful experience during my two years at seminary.  From July 2010 through November 2010 I left my room probably like 8 times and I could count on one hand the number of times that I actually made it to my classes.  I shopped for my wedding dress with mono and subsequently just picked one out of sheer fatigue.  This not only took a huge physical toll but it also wreaked havoc on my emotions so pretty much all I wanted to do was quit seminary and become a professional sleeper so that I could get over the damn disease.   Mono also brought some guests with it such as strep throat and tonsillitis, about three months apart so its not like I could do the suffering all at one time.
2. During seminary I gained 30 lbs and reached new lows of physical shape.  This is largely due to the five months of mono + emotional turmoil.  Lying in bed and eating to make myself feel better will definitely add some weight.  Unfortunately, though, because my body got so emaciated and weak during the illnesses, its going to take quite some time commitment to get it back to any sense of normal.  I’m definitely looking forward to doing this over the summer.  The 30 pounds also has caused a lot of emotional turmoil, especial with my impending nuptials a mere month and a half away.
3. During seminary I got my first speeding ticket.  Ok, this is a minor one but it traumatized me and it just seems to fit with my overall disdain for unfortunate events.  What makes it worse is that now I go the speed limit.
4. During seminary I had to go to the ER twice.  Another health folly.  The first one was at the end of my first year here – I had an infected wisdom tooth so I went to the ER to get antibiotics, for which they charged me a FORTUNE because my student insurance does not cover dental.  So later I got that tooth pulled.  Then, amidst the mono and the tonsillitis, I had a severe stomach bug or food poisoning.  Let’s just say there was hemorrhaging, pain, and lots of blood which landed me in the emergency room with my poor fiancé.  Congrats on your engagement…
5. During seminary I was/felt unable to do any of the ministry activities that I loved previous to arriving here.  This one was not so bad at first because I had sort of understood that grad school was going to require a hibernation (of sorts) from extracurricular activities.  It just so happens that all the reasons why I even came to grad school (love for discipleship, teaching the world and spiritual truths, leading bible studies, etc) were the activities that I had to cut out in order to give time to my studies.  I think that this also correlates with the difficulty I had getting involved with a church – it took me a while to find one I liked and then it ended up being too far away so I didn’t even find a church until the end of my first year here.  Then the second year I had mono and going to church, let alone leading and discipling and such was far from a realistic option.
6. During seminary I had my first boyfriend, first kiss, got engaged, and had my family meet my significant other for the first time and met my significant others’ family for the first time.  Ok, so these are obviously good things but they are MAJOR stressors and they don’t make the paper you have to write for systematic theology nearly as interesting as learning about this guy you’re dating.  In addition, all of these things were especially emotionally taxing for me because they were so new and I was having to explain everything to my poor family via emails and telephone conversations and it was new for them too, so they didn’t really help the stress level.
7. During seminary I was in a pretty dysfunctional living situation.  Enough said, I’m not going to go over this in more detail.
8. During seminary, I lived away from home for the first time in life.  This is hard!
9. During seminary I have had to plan my wedding.  Wedding are wonderful things – but when you just want to get married and be done with school because you think you’re never going to get over mono unless you sleep for two years, planning a wedding becomes a major distraction.  It is also a stressor and a time when people politics are often at their worst.  And also, I like it and prefer doing design things to writing papers at this stage in life.
10. During seminary I have reached all-time spiritual lows.  I feel like seminary alumni always warn you about the spiritual toll that seminary can take on you.  I would have had a hard time anyway but add the difficulties of seminary to all this other stuff and it just creates a spiritual desert.  Being so saturated in the Bible and theological topics, it gets harder and harder to open the Word again and try to glean some sort of personal and relational hope from it.  Prayer life is also at an all-time low.  It just feels like everything you’re doing is a ‘quiet time’ so it all begins to lose meaning and significance.  Prayer is something that I look forward to practicing more as I begin to heal from this series of unfortunate events.